familiar faces
by arborescent
Summary: Shinichi stared at the man in front of him. It would've been like staring into a mirror, if not for the painfully familiar smirk on the other man's face. "Have we met before?" The other man's smirk grew even wider. "...Not like this." In which the Kurobas visit the Kudos, and chaos quickly ensues.


**familiar faces**

rated k+ for now

summary: Shinichi stared at the man in front of him. "Have we met before?" "...Not like this." In which the Kurobas visit the Kudos, and chaos quickly ensues.

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 **a/n:** Hi! I haven't been writing or updating for a while... life happened and I just fell out of the writing groove. I found this fic on my phone the other day, so I dusted it off and decided to post it as a stopgap, kinda consolation story while I start up my writing engine (brain) again. Since I wrote it on my phone, please excuse any typos or instances of excessive wordiness. (I proofread, but I'm sure something must have slipped past my filter.) Anyways, you can expect this to be a maybe three-parter fic? It won't be too long, so enjoy!

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Kaito knew his mother had something up her sleeve. For the first time in several years, she had invited Kaito to travel with her. After Toichi's death, Chikage, still in her twenties, had been utterly devastated. Ekoda held too many bad memories for her, so the day after Kaito's tenth birthday, she packed up her belongings and set off on a tour of the world. To Chikage, the rest of the world was much better compared to Ekoda, and she never really returned to her home. Although she loved Kaito very much, he resembled Toichi to the point that it pained her, and so Chikage kept away from her son, too.

"Beika?!"

Kaito gave his mother an incredulous stare as she smiled through his laptop screen.

"You heard me, Kaito! I'm traveling to Beika, and I want you to meet me there!"

"Mom, Beika is at least three hours away by train, and I have school-"

"You missed high school classes all the time, honey, why is university any different?"

"Well-"

"You'll have no trouble making up a few days of classes, honey. I know I raised a smart son."

Kaito rolled his eyes as he sat back in his chair. Chikage had barely raised him; he considered Inspector Nakamori to be more of a parent than his own mother. But this decision to visit Beika was unusual- Chikage never came to Japan, and in turn, never saw her son in person. This was a rare opportunity that Kaito wasn't about to give up. The only problem was...

"Mom, I'd love to go, but I have a heist on the nineteenth."

"A heist? I thought you gave up on that thieving foolishness already."

Chikage had always been against KID's revival. She harbored the not-so-irrational fear that her son too would be murdered by the Black Organization, and she would be left all alone in the vast and empty world.

"Mom, you know full well I can't stop. Each heist takes me a step closer to putting Dad's killers behind bars!"

Chikage flinched at Toichi's mention, and her smile turned sour. She took on a dismissive tone and glanced at her nails, ignoring Kaito's last comment.

"The nineteenth you said? It doesn't matter, you'll probably be back home the night before."

"...Why do you want me to go, anyways?"

"Is it so wrong for a mother to request the company of her son?"

"Let's be real here, Mom."

Sighing dramatically, Chikage turned away from her nails to face her son.

"There's someone I want you to meet, honey. Well actually, there's two of them- three, if you count their son. He should be the same age as you by now. Anyways, they were good friends of mine and I haven't seen them in- Oh, I can't even remember! It's been ten years, at least."

"...Alright, but none of this has to do with me."

"Oh, but it does!" Chikage leaned forward, fingers steepled and a conspiratorial grin on her lips. "You see, the people I want you to meet are the Ku-"

As if on cue, Chikage was interrupted by the shrill ring of her mobile phone.

"Sorry, honey, I need to take this call. Just, make sure you come to Beika alright? I promise it'll be worth your time!"

Chikage ended the video chat with a wink, and Kaito groaned as he stared at the ceiling of his room. That woman...

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Kaito frowned at his watch as he readjusted the backpack resting on his shoulder. He was standing in front of the Haido City Hotel and waiting for Chikage, who was currently forty-five minutes late. Sighing, Kaito leaned against the building and pulled out his cellphone. Dialing his mother's number, Kaito was immediately redirected to her voicemail.

"Hi! This is Chikage Kuroba, I'm probably busy right now, so please leave a message after the tone! Have a nice day!"

"Hey Mom, this is Kaito. Where are you? You're almost an hour late. Call me back when you get this, yeah?"

Kaito hung up and stuffed his phone back into his pocket, resigning himself to a long wait. Absently, he wondered how Tantei-kun was doing. Even though the detective had been restored to his proper size over a year ago, the nickname of Tantei-kun still stuck. Once he had returned to living as Shinichi Kudo, the detective rarely came to KID heists, preferring to devote his time to solving homicides instead of catching a harmless thief. From what Kaito had gathered, Shinichi was now juggling a proper job in the police force with attending Tohto University. It was a surprise that he had time to come to any heists at all. Kaito chuckled to himself; Tantei-kun never failed to impress.

"What's so funny?"

Kaito started and turned his head to see his mother smiling at him, suitcase in one hand and several shopping bags in the other.

"About time you showed up, I was about to go back to Ekoda!"

Kaito admonished Chikage, who just laughed and waved his reprimands away with one hand.

"I know you wouldn't have left, honey, you love your dear mother too much to do that."

Kaito pushed off of the wall he was leaning against and readjusted his backpack again. "I wonder..."

"Did you say something, honey?"

"Just talking to myself."

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"So who are we visiting again?"

Kaito was carrying his mother's suitcase up to her hotel room as she trailed behind, swinging her shopping bags.

"I told you, some old friends of mine! You met them when you were about...oh, six or seven?"

Kaito stopped in front of his mother's room and fished the keycard out of his pocket. Opening the door, Kaito shook his head as he walked in to the room. "Don't remember."

Chikage followed her son, closing the door behind them. "I don't expect you to, honey, it was such a long time ago. But maybe meeting them today will refresh your memory."

Kaito placed Chikage's suitcase next to the bed before turning to face her.

"Today?"

"Didn't I tell you? We're going over to their house tonight for dinner. Yuusaku's quite the cook, I remember."

Kaito frowned faintly. Yuusaku? The name stirred a faint memory in Kaito's mind, but it melted back into his subconsciousness before it had fully registered. Kaito shrugged it off as he followed his mother back to the hotel lobby. It couldn't be anything too important, the teen reassured himself. Exiting the hotel and heading to the nearest train station, Kaito let his mom change the topic as she talked about her travels in America. Kaito zoned out, nodding and inserting meaningless comments here and there. It was only when they were passing through the station turnstiles that Chikage's stories caught Kaito's attention. "That's where Yuusaku and Yukiko live most of the time, you know. I was planning on visiting them while I was in the U.S., but we were all too busy. That's why I'm so excited to see them here!"

Yuusaku? Yukiko? Alarms started going off in Kaito's head, blaring warnings that he should turn back while he still could. What was he missing? And what was this feeling of foreboding writhing around in his stomach? As he stepped into the train and listened to Chikage's nonstop chatter, he racked his brain for an answer. Yuusaku and Yukiko... If only he knew their last names. As the train pulled into the next station, Kaito turned to his mother. "The people we're meeting...what's their last name?" He had cut Chikage off mid-sentence, and she let out an indignant huff. "You'll find out soon enough. This is our stop."

Kaito was taken aback. They were disembarking here? Kaito was familiar with this station... Because it was where he often came when he was doing recon on Tantei-kun. Kaito blanched. Remember that vague sense of foreboding? Because it had just morphed into a heavy, vehement dread that hit the bottom of Kaito's stomach like a punch to the gut. How could he have forgotten? Tantei-kun's real name was Kudo Shinichi, and and that meant his parents were-

"Yuusaku! Yukiko! It's so nice to see you again! I didn't know you were coming to meet us! And look how much you've grown... Shinichi-kun!"


End file.
